


Pregnant

by Glory1863



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: F/M, Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-28
Updated: 2012-05-28
Packaged: 2017-11-06 03:44:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/414338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glory1863/pseuds/Glory1863
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stuart Reed has some qualms about becoming a father for the second time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pregnant

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the February 2011 word prompt "pregnant" at the Delphic Expanse.
> 
> Many thanks to my beta, Artisticmom2, and reviewers at ff.net who made this a better story.

Stuart Reed, captain of the _HMS Victorious_ , sat in his cabin and tried to pull himself together. He found it necessary to call upon all his years of training as a Royal Navy officer and his lifelong experience of being a Reed to get his emotions under some semblance of control. He had been like this since his communications officer had informed him that a message was coming in from his wife, Mary.

Mary Reed was not an excitable type. She didn’t contact him outside their agreed upon communication time unless something terrible had happened at home. In the last 5 years, that something terrible had always involved their son, and only child, Malcolm.

Some 5 years earlier, Mary had been involved in a low-speed accident at Paddington station. There had been a glitch in the automatic train control system such that one train bumped another. She’d been thrown out of her seat and landed heavily on the floor. She’d checked out fine at the nearest casualty ward and had gone on about her business as if nothing had happened, only to go into premature labor later that evening. Malcolm had been born much too early.

At that time, Stuart had been newly assigned as captain of the _Victorious_. He’d been halfway around the world, 150 nautical miles south of Wake Island in the Pacific, bringing a detachment of Royal Marines to help the Yanks put down civil unrest in the old prototype oceanic city of Ballard. He’d been on the deck of his ship in the middle of the tropics when the message had come and his blood had turned to ice. God, what if he lost them both? Would he turn to drink like the morose Captain Fletcher, his old CO, on the _Invincible_?

_Stop it, bucko_ , he warned himself. _Best not to keep her waiting. Best to get it over with_. He took a deep breath, and then pressed the button. “Comm, put her through.”

“Aye, sir.”

The image of the Winged Victory of Samothrace, the emblem for his ship, disappeared from the screen to be replaced by the smiling face of his wife.

“What’s wrong with Malcolm this time?” he blurted out. Damn, he hadn’t meant to say that, but he’d always been a no-nonsense sort of bloke and Mary knew that.

“Wrong with Malcolm? There’s nothing wrong with Malcolm. Why would you . . .” Her eyes widened as her smile abruptly turned to shock.

It was about this time that whichever side of his brain that was supposed to notice these things kicked in and informed him that Mary had been smiling and was in his office at home. Neither of those things would have been true if Malcolm were seriously ill yet again.

“Stuart, dear, I’m so sorry! I should have realized that would be your first thought. Malcolm’s right as rain. I got some wonderful news Monday last. I tried to wait until Friday to tell you, but I just couldn’t. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

_Thank God, Malcolm is fine!_ He closed his eyes for a moment, took another deep breath and pasted a shaky smile on his face. “No worries, love. Now what’s this good news that couldn’t wait?”

“I went to see Dr. V.”

_Doctor V?_ He ran through the contact list in his head, all the pediatric consultants - neonatologists, pulmonologists, allergists, pediatricians, and the rest of the lot who had treated Malcolm over the years - but came up empty.

Then he remembered; Dr. V, short for Veeramachaneni, was Mary’s obstetrician.

_Bloody hell! It couldn’t be!_

“You’re going to be a father again. I’m about 2 months along. All the scans are fine.” She was smiling again. That had to be a pretty good indication that he hadn’t actually said aloud what he’d been thinking. _Damn and blast! I can’t go through **that** again!_

It wasn’t just that the requests for compassionate leave were having a seriously negative effect on his career. The road to admiralty was not a daddy track. No, it was what he’d seen, what he’d felt, when he’d made it to the Princess of Wales Hospital for Sick Children in London and had been introduced to his son for the first time.

He still wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but it wasn’t the tiny, wizened creature, orange as a pumpkin and entangled in a mass of lines, leads, sensors, and tubes that would have confused even his chief engineer, that he saw in the isolette under the special lights. He shook his head slightly, trying to forget the unholy symphony of beeps, chirps, bongs, and buzzes that the myriad of monitors had made.

“No, really, darling. Dr. V says everything looks good. There’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to carry the baby to term. Last time was an accident. Lightening won’t strike twice.”

He managed a small nod while wondering how it was that a woman as intelligent as Mary had never heard of Murphy’s law - anything that can go wrong will, in the worst possible way, at the worst possible time - or his executive officer’s favorite corollary - Murphy was an optimist.

What was he going to say? He had the sense to stay out of the minefield of asking if she was sure she was pregnant and was she sure it was his. Dr. V and the scans couldn’t be wrong. As for the last, Mary was a devoted wife and mother. All that she’d dealt with concerning Malcolm in the last few years, mostly alone and largely without complaint, was undeniable proof of that. He’d won the sweepstakes when she’d consented to marry him. Unlike some of his colleagues, he never worried about his wife cheating while he was deployed. As for himself, whether in port at Sydney, Murmansk, Rio, or who the hell knows where, he never considered straying, either.

He also knew that he couldn’t tell her the truth. He’d been terrified the entire time he’d been in London. He’d been afraid to touch his own son, afraid that his touch could be lethal. He’d found the tubes, bags, catheters, and lines not only frightening, but also disgusting. Worse, that reaction hadn’t changed; hadn’t gotten better over the years. There was no way he could admit that to Mary. No way he could explain that he was happy to go back to sea where he knew what the hell he was doing, whether it was fighting off pirates in the Persian Gulf, chasing smugglers off Cornwall, or sailing, as he was now, through the remnants of the worst Atlantic hurricane on record. He’d been happy to leave Malcolm and all his troubles to her, and he was ashamed for feeling that way.

Finally, he thought of something logical and, he hoped, safe to say. “So what are we having, then, love?”

“Dr. V says we’re having a girl. Won’t that be nice? We’ll have one of each then, a matched set. I was thinking we could name her Madeline. You don’t mind, do you?”

Was that a note of worry in her otherwise happy recital? He wasn’t sure because he was too busy thinking that he really wasn’t very pleased about any of it. Not that there was anything he could do about it at this point. Would he have preferred another, healthier son, one more likely to carry on the family name and to follow in his footsteps? As long as she were healthy, would it be easier to deal with a daughter? Healthy was the key.

“That sounds good, dear.”

“Mummy, who are you talking to?”

“Malcolm, what are you doing up at this hour?” As Mary turned to address their son, the little boy saw his father’s face on the screen.

“Daddy! Daddy! I miss you!” Malcolm called out as he rushed into the room.

Stuart couldn’t help but smile. There stood Malcolm with tousled dark hair, sleep having fled from shining blue-gray eyes. Clutched tightly in his small hands was an oversized, brightly colored, plastic water rifle. The wet spots on his son’s pajamas were a dead giveaway that the toy was “locked and loaded.”

He couldn’t condone the behavior, however, so he sternly advised, “Answer your mother, Malcolm. It’s well past your bedtime. What **are** you doing up?”

Malcolm drew himself up to his full height of around 115 cm and earnestly began to explain himself. “Daddy, when you went to sea, you told me I had to be the man of the house while you were gone. That means I have to watch out for Mummy; and Baby Maddie in her tummy, too. I heard her talking and thought a bad man had broken in, so I got my rifle to scare him away.”

“Mummy’s safe - and Maddie, too - so say goodnight and go back to bed, Malcolm.”

Malcolm’s face scrunched up as he tried to suppress a yawn. He’d been taught that a polite young man would cover a yawn with his hand, but he didn’t want to relax his hold on his water rifle. Just in case.

“You don’t want to fall asleep on duty tomorrow because you didn’t get enough sleep tonight, lad. That would be a very bad thing.”

“Yes, sir. Good night, Daddy. I love you!”

“Good night, Malcolm. I love you, too.” There was something he couldn’t read in his son’s eyes as the little boy favored him with a small, hesitant smile, turned and trudged back toward his room.

“I’d best go tuck our little commando in,” Mary sighed. “Good night, love.” She blew Stuart a kiss as she cut the connection.

And just for a moment, before the screen went black, Stuart had the impression that perhaps Mary herself thought that two children might turn out to be one too many as well.


End file.
